NEW YORK — Ripple Labs Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse on Friday projected that the global stablecoin market could balloon to “as much as $13 trillion” by the end of the decade, outlining plans for a Ripple-issued, U.S.-dollar-backed token aimed first at institutional clients.
Speaking at the Global Digital Assets Summit in Singapore, Garlinghouse told attendees that growing demand for on-chain settlement among multinational corporations and banks would dwarf the roughly $150 billion in stablecoins currently in circulation. “We are still in the dial-up days of tokenized dollars,” he said, according to people present at the closed-door session.
Ripple, best known for its XRP cross-border payments network, has been quietly building a fully reserved dollar stablecoin for more than a year, two people familiar with the effort said. Company engineers are targeting a limited pilot in the fourth quarter of 2026 that would connect the token to Ripple’s payment rails and select banking partners in Europe, the Middle East and the United States.
Retail traders may have to wait. Garlinghouse signaled that regulatory uncertainty in the United States and strict know-your-customer requirements overseas make an open retail launch “unlikely at first,” stressing that the firm “will work with licensed institutions who can meet the bar regulators are setting.”
The remarks come as lawmakers in Washington debate bipartisan bills that would impose reserve, auditing and disclosure mandates on issuers of dollar-pegged tokens. Industry analysts say Ripple’s decision to court banks instead of crypto exchanges could help the company avoid the intense scrutiny rivals Tether and Circle face from U.S. regulators.
“Targeting wholesale payments rather than retail speculation gives Ripple a cleaner regulatory story,” said Marta Velazquez, a senior analyst at Beacon Policy Advisors. “But it also means they’ll be competing head-to-head with JPMorgan’s JPM Coin and any future bank-issued tokens.”
Market strategists noted that a $13 trillion ceiling implies that roughly 10 percent of global M2 money supply could migrate on-chain. Whether that estimate proves realistic will depend on how quickly governments enact clear rules and on the pace of central-bank digital-currency rollouts.
For now, investors will be watching Capitol Hill and global banking regulators. If new frameworks arrive this year, Ripple’s institutional-first approach could give it an early foothold—leaving retail users to catch up later.